Practice-oriented Criminology: Chances and Risks

This article begins with some remarks on the original topic the author was asked to talk about during the 2012 state of criminology conference in Freiburg: possible dangers for the autonomy of criminology when it sees itself, in one way or another, as an applied science. Based on this, it is argued that any sound scientific discipline has a pivotal need for independent basic research. However, even a practice-oriented or applied discipline cannot flourish without a sound theoretical foundation. Apart from this fundamental consideration, one also has to be aware that, as history has convincingly and sometimes sadly shown, even in a so-called free or basic science, a host of restrictive or prohibitive influences can occur in the everyday real scholarly business which restrain or even block off not only the incoming young scholars. This article pleads for a multifaceted criminology with basic and applied forms of scientific research.